Public Information regarding Bharatavani Project CIIL, Mysuru

As on 1 July 2017

(i)

The particulars of its organization, functions and duties:Bharatavani is a project with an objective of delivering knowledge in and about all the languages in India in multimedia (text, audio, video, images) formats through an online portal. Bharatavani project is part of creating a Knowledge Society in the age of Digital India.

Bharatavani Project is a new initiative by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru has been entrusted with the task of implementing the project.

Bharatavani will be made accessible to all sections of society irrespective of age, gender, income, background, and education etc. Bharatavani aims to serve all the cross section of the society.

Providing available knowledge already created by Government and publicly funded institutions all over India, and putting it across for the public usage, by deploying a robust, interactive, user friendly web tools is the main objective of Bharatavani Project. The project will be guided by advisory committees on content and technology.

A public information document about the Bharatavani Project is enclosed herewith as Annexure III.

(ii)

The powers and duties of its officers and employees:Bharatavani Project is being implemented by CIIL, Mysuru, under the directions of the Director, CIIL. CIIL is an institution functioning directly under Department of Higher Education, MHRD. The
Consultant of the Bharatavani Project will coordinate various activities of the Project and oversee the monitoring of the project.

(iii)

The procedure followed in the decision making process including channels of supervision and accountability:The overall decision making authorities rest with the Director, CIIL. He is supported by the following Officers:

Assistant Director (Administration) who is administrative head of CIIL under the Director.

Officer in charge of Bharatavani Project, who is presently LJRO, CIIL.

Consultant, Bharatavani, who is engaged on contractual terms to oversee the overall implementation of the Bharatavani Project.

Decision making process:

The Project’s content and technology related decisions are taken as per the discussions and recommendations by the National Advisory Committee (Content) and National Advisory Committee (Technology), both functioning under the Chairpersonship of the Director, CIIL.

The Consultant, based on the decisions of the Advisory Committees, and the guidelines and instructions by the Director, initiates action. The proposals and notes will be duly ratified by the Officer i/c Bharatavani Project, Assistant Director (Administration), and then finally approved by the Director, CIIL.

(iv)

The norms set by it for the discharge of its functions:The norms that are governing CIIL, Mysuru are equally applicable to Bharatavani Project also, as the Project is directly implemented by CIIL.

(v)

The rules, regulations, instructions, manuals and records, held by it or under its control or used by its employees for discharging its functions:All the rules, regulations, manuals and records used in CIIL Mysuru are binding on Bharatavani Project.

(vi)

A statement of the categories of documents that are held by it or under its control:Bharatavani Project manages the following types of documents:Internal communications, approvals, proposals, reports, and all such administrative communications:External communications with other institutions, responses, MOUs and related documents

SL.NO.

PARTICULARS

1

F.No.3-25/2015-16/BVP/Miscellaneous

2

F.No.3-25/2015-16/BVP/Policy/MOU

3

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/BVP/Misc/Tenders

4

F.No.3-25/2015-16/ BVP /RPS/Payments

5

F.No.3-25/2015-16 /BVP /Payments

6

F.No.3-25/2015-16/ BVP /Domain Name

7

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16 /BVP/Committees

8

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Misc/Editorial Committees

9

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16 /BVP/Budget File

10

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/BVP/Meetings

11

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Misc/Logo

12

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Bharatavani Program

13

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Casual Leave

14

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Payments (Consultant)

15

F.No.3-25/ 2016-17/ BVP/Online Courses

16

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Advertisements

17

F.No.3-25/ 2016-17/ BVP/Events

18

F.No.3-25/ 2016-17/ BVP/Field Trips

19

F.No.3-25/ 2015-16/ BVP/Recruitments

20

F.No.3-25/ 2016-17/ BVP/Peripherals/IT

21

F.No.3-25/ 2016-17/ BVP/Misc/Digitisation

REGISTERS MAINTAINED:

1. FILE MOVEMENT REGISTER.

2. STOCK INVENTORY REGISTER.

3. BUDGET REGISTER.

4. BVP OFFICE EXPENSES REGISTER.

5. DIARY REGISTER.

(vii)

The particulars of any arrangement that exists for consultation with or representation by the members of the public in relation to the formulation of its policy or implementation thereof:Bharatavani Project is bound by the same arrangement which is followed by CIIL for consultation or representation by the public.

(viii)

A statement of the boards, councils, committees and other bodies consisting of two or more persons constituted as its part or for the purpose of its advice and as to whether meetings of those boards, councils, committees and other bodies are open to the public or the minutes of such meetings are accessible for public:The list of Committees and their members is given in Annexure I

(ix)

A directory of its officers and employeesThe list of employees under Bharatavani Project is given in Annexure II

(x)

The monthly remuneration received by each of its officers and employees including the system of compensation as provided in its regulations:The monthly remuneration received by each of employees under Bharatavani Project is given in Annexure II

(xi)

The budget allocated to each of its agency indicating the particulars of all plans, proposed expenditures and reports on disbursements made:Bharatavani Project budget is allocated inside CIIL’s annual budget. Since the project is a new one, the details of the budgetary allocations are yet to be finalised.

(xii)

The manner of execution of subsidy programmes including the amounts allocated and the details of beneficiaries of such programmes:NIL

(xiii)

Particulars of recipients of concessions, permits or authorizations granted by it:NIL

(xiv)

Details in respect of the information available to or held by it reduced in an electronic form:

Tenders floated during December 2015

Outward mail register in spreadsheet format

(xv)

The particulars of facilities available to citizens for obtaining information including the working hours of a library or reading room, if maintained for public use:From CIIL website or by making a request to the PIOs by post or by e-mail, the citizens can obtain the information as Bharatavani being implemented directly under CIIL

(xvi)

The names, designations and other particulars of the Public Information Officers:Same as CIIL’s PIO information.

Annexure IList of various committees under Bharatavani Project and its members

Bharatavani is a project with an objective of delivering knowledge in and about all the languages in India using multimedia (i.e., text, audio, video, images) formats through a portal (website). This portal would be all inclusive, interactive, dynamic and moderated. The idea is to make India a Open Knowledge Society, in the era of Digital India.

Who are the beneficiaries of Bharatavani knowledge portal?

Bharatavani will be accessible to all sections of society irrespective of age, gender, income, background, education (formal and informal) etc. Thus Bharatavani serves to all the citizens of India.

How the content is aggregated for Bharatavani?

Bharatavani collects knowledge content in all the enlisted languages in multimedia formats from all the Government and Non-Governmental Institutions, Educational Institutions, Board of Education, Directorate of textbooks, Universities, Academies, Publication
Houses etc.

Bharatavani will also request private Institutions to share their content for perpetual online usage.

The approval process of prioritization and selection of content will be put in place. The recommendations by the editorial committee will be finally decided by the Advisory Committee.

The focus of Bharatavani is to publish knowledge content. But it will also publish representative non-fiction content based on specific
criteria to be decided by the Advisory Committee.

How Bharatavani ensures the quality of the content?

Bharatavani will begin publishing content created by subject experts and also the content published by reputed institutions starting from the CIIL itself.

For the publication of newly generated content, Bharatavani will have editorial committee for each language.

All the mechanisms to publish error free content will be established.

Will Bharatavani publish language IT tools?

Bharatavani will provide a platform to showcase all the available, updated IT tools for Indian Languages. It will coordinate with the Ministry of Communication and IT (MCIT), which is developing such tools through its agencies like TDIL. Language tools such as fonts, software, typing tools, mobile apps, multi language translation tools, text to speech, speech to text etc. will be made available.

What are the benefits of Bharatavani to the society at large?

Bharatavani will make Indian languages/mother tongues visible on the Internet on a large scale, resulting in encouraging young generation to use their languages/mother tongues in all their online activities like blogging, social media, learning etc.

Bharatavani will provide endangered, minor, minority and tribal languages/mother tongue a prominent place in the cyber space.

By covering almost all Indian languages/mother tongue, Bharatavani will invariably connect with all the communities of India, reaching remote areas and promote cultural awareness and understanding.

Will Bharatavani publish Government information?

Bharatavani project will be cross linked to agriculture, business, education, social sector, timely delivery of services and other
important/necessary portals so that all citizens get knowledge and information on a single portal.

What are the physical targets of Bharatavani? What are the types of content that are being published in Bharatavani?

Bharatavani will come out with a priority topic list for developing knowledge content for the first and second years of its operations.
Thereafter, it will have specific content generation targets for each language/mother tongue for the next five years. Initially, it will strive to publish all the readily available content in different languages.

Bharatavani will work on the following tasks

Documentation of languages and literatures in digital/electronic format.

Formulating / designing scripts, typography codes.

Preparation of dictionaries and glossaries.

Translation of literary (both written and oral) and knowledge texts in modern and classical languages.

Online language teaching, learning and language teacher training with certification shall be provided, and also, online language testing and evaluation which would include continuous, comprehensive evaluation would also be taken care of.

Will the content published in Bharatavani be accessed freely? How the copyright of the content in Bharatavani would be protected?

Bharatavani is a new age portal with an objective of sharing knowledge with the public, particularly Indian citizens. So all the content that is available on Bharatavani portal will be free for usage for educational and research purposes.

The portal abides by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012, which allows certain activities as non-infringement of copyrights under Section 52.

Can private institutions and individuals contribute to Bharatavani? Will Bharatavani pay an honorarium for the content?

Yes. They can offer their originally created non-fiction/ knowledge content for free public usage. Author attributions will be given for
their contribution. Acceptance of such materials is subject to the approval of the editorial committee.

Honorarium rates for the perpetual usage of the content will be decided by the National Advisory Committee, based on the funding of the original content, originality and exclusivity of the content.

How Bharatavani is made accessible for Physically Challenged?

Bharatavani will follow the guidelines of Government of India in developing the portal, apart from following internationally accepted accessibility criteria.

Bharatavani will incorporate free Text to Speech utility for available languages so that the website content is read out for the visually challenged.

What happens if somebody steals the information from Bharatavani?

Bharatavani trusts the public in general. Any plagiarism, wrongful usage based out of Bharatavani content could be brought to our notice immediately. Bharatavani encourages usage of its content to learn and spread the languages, which help in preserving the rich linguistic and cultural heritage of India.

What is the administrative structure of Bharatavani?

Bharatavani is run by

A National Advisory Committee comprising of eminent Linguists and knowledge experts.

A Technology Advisory Committee which will guide on the technological aspects of the portal and the language tools.